As a matter of policy, LINGUIST discourages the use of abbreviations
or acronyms in conference announcements unless they are explained in
the text. To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at
http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html.

Meeting Description: Phonological Words in South Asia and Southeast Asia

Workshop to be held at the University of Leipzig, Germany, September 19-20, 2007 (funded by the German Research Foundation, DFG)

The meeting aims at bringing together research which focuses on the prosodic and morphological word structure of languages spoken in South Asia and Southeast Asia. Contributions are expected to be theoretically and typologically informed and should either concentrate on the analysis of word domains in individual languages or address areal and/or diachronic aspects of word structure by means of cross-linguistic comparison.

Broadly speaking, the study of word structure is concerned with two distinct but interdependent aspects of grammar. First, a word may be prosodically defined by phonological patterns, e.g. assimilation, stress, or tone, which reference a particular domain in morphological structure (e.g. a combination of stem plus suffixes, excluding prefixes). Second, the grammatical word may be defined with reference to syntactic and morphological patterns that apply exclusively to a particular domain in morphological structure (e.g. a stem plus affixes, excluding clitics). In recent years, the relationship between prosodic and grammatical words has received increased attention (e.g. Hall & Kleinhenz 1999, Dixon & Aikhenvald 2002). Research on the cross-linguistic variation of word domains shed doubt on approaches which aim at formulating a universal architecture of prosodic structure and its dependence on morphological and syntactic components of grammar. The assumptions of Prosodic Phonology (Nespor & Vogel 1986), for instance, are contradicted by current research in a typological project on word domains at the University of Leipzig (see http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~autotyp/projects/wd_dom/wd_dom.html for recent publications). The languages of South and Southeast Asia provide a particular challenge because in a number of South Asian languages sound patterns do not converge on a single domain of 'phonological word' as predicted by theories, and in a number of Southeast Asian languages, no or almost no sound pattern seems to target a domain intermediate between the phrases and the foot. In our project we found that the distribution of phonological domains is however best predicted not by areal connections but by genealogical affiliation and thus ultimately by the individual diachrony behind each language. We invite abstracts for a two-day workshop on word domains in South and Southeast Asian languages. The meeting aims at bringing together research which focuses on the prosodic and morphological word structure of languages spoken in these areas. Contributions are expected to be theoretically and typologically informed and should either concentrate on the analysis of word domains in individual languages or address areal and/or diachronic aspects of word structure by means of cross-linguistic comparison. One-page abstracts for 45-minutes presentations (30 min. talk + 15 min. discussion) should be submitted electronically via e-mail attachment (mail to: schieringuni-leipzig.de) and should reach the organizers no later than April 16, 2007. Notification of acceptance will be circulated in late April 2007.

Our workshop aims to bring together researchers from the diverse fields of NLP, machine learning, artificial intelligence, (psycho)linguistics, etc. who are interested in the relevance of computational techniques for understanding human language learning. The workshop is intended to bridge the gap between the computational and cognitive communities, promote knowledge and resource sharing, and help initiate interdisciplinary research projects.

The past decades have seen a massive expansion in the application of statistical and machine learning methods to natural language processing (NLP). This work has yielded impressive results in numerous speech and language processing tasks, including e.g. speech recognition, morphological analysis, parsing, lexical acquisition, semantic interpretation, and dialogue management. The good results have generally been viewed as engineering achievements.

Recently researchers have begun to investigate the relevance of computational learning methods for research on human language acquisition. These investigations are very important since if computational techniques can be used to improve our understanding of human language acquisition, this will not only benefit cognitive sciences in general but will reflect back to NLP and place us in a better position to develop useful language models.

Some examples of recent investigations include:

- statistical lexical acquisition and analysis of corpora to gain more accurate descriptions of the learning environment, to investigate the lexical properties of developmental stages, and to quantify differences between child and adult productions;

- computational models which investigate the capabilities of particular theories (notably the benefit and practicality of Universal Grammar);

Success in this type of research requires close collaboration between NLP and cognitive scientists. To this end, interdisciplinary workshops can play a key role in advancing existing and initiating new research. This was demonstrated by two successful workshops held at COLING 2004 and ACL 2005 which focused on psycho- computational models of human language acquisition. However, in general, there has been little space at major NLP conferences for cognitive aspects of language acquisition. Even CoNLL which was originally intended to provide a venue for research on (psycho)linguistically relevant machine learning work has only occasionally provided a forum for work.

Target Audience

Our workshop aims to bring together researchers from the diverse fields of NLP, machine learning, artificial intelligence, (psycho)linguistics, etc. who are interested in the relevance of computational techniques for understanding human language learning. The workshop is intended to bridge the gap between the computational and cognitive communities, promote knowledge and resource sharing, and help initiate interdisciplinary research projects.

- Empirical and theoretical comparisons of the learning environment and its impact on the acquisition task

- Computational methods for acquiring various linguistic information (related to e.g. speech, morphology, lexicon, syntax, semantics, and discourse) and their relevance to research on human language acquisition

Papers should describe original work and should indicate the state of completion of the reported results. In particular, any overlap with previously published work should be clearly mentioned. Submissions will be judged on correctness, novelty, technical strength, clarity of presentation, usability, and significance/relevance to the workshop.

Submissions should follow the two-column format of the ACL 2007 main-conference proceedings and should not exceed eight (8) pages, including references. We strongly recommend the use of either the LaTeX style file or the Microsoft-Word Style file, which can be found at http://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/acl2007/styles.

The reviewing will be blind. Therefore, the paper should not include the authors' names and affiliations. Furthermore, self-citations and other references that could reveal the author's identity should be avoided.

Submissions will be reviewed by 3 members of the Program Committee. Authors of accepted papers will receive guidelines regarding how to produce camera-ready versions of their papers for inclusion in the ACL workshop proceedings.